Communications between a mobile device and a corresponding node are processed in a UMTS (Universal Mobile Telecommunications System) network through GPRS (General Packet Radio Service) serving nodes. The GPRS serving nodes include an SGSN (Serving GPRS Support Node) and a GGSN (Gateway GPRS Support Node). Such communication exchange between the mobile device and the corresponding node involve communication exchange between the mobile device and the SGSN. Communication exchanges such as user plane communication (i.e. IP data traffic) between the mobile device and the SGSN node use one or more PDP contexts. There may be many PDP contexts depending on how many different applications of the mobile device are communicating over PDP contexts. However, the number of PDP contexts for the mobile device may be limited by the number of PDP contexts supported in the routing area in which the mobile device resides.
Different routing areas may support different numbers of PDP contexts. However, the mobile device is unaware of how many PDP contexts a given routing area supports for the mobile device. This can lead to undesirable situations. For instance, the mobile device might request a new PDP context to be established while unaware that a maximum number of IP sessions is already established. Therefore, the mobile device will be unsuccessful in establishing the new PDP context. This leads to poor management of PDP contexts by the mobile device. If more services using a PDP context are requested the by user than are supported by network then there may be some sort of multiplexing of which some services are delayed, etc.
A possible approach is for the mobile device to always assume that only one PDP context is supported. However, this approach does not take advantage of when additional PDP contexts are supported. This may result in unhappy users on networks that supported more than one PDP context.